From an early age, I found myself creating performative events, often with no audience and no documentation, neither photographic nor written, that were specifically perpetrated to have a direct experience outside of the conventions around me - outside of school, my family, my community. Of course, I was educated, socialized and indoctrinated by my specific set of circumstances, which gave me the language and framework in which everything was initiated; but, I became aware at a certain age that the world as fabricated around me was what I would now term, constructed, and did not necessarily or entirely describe what I saw in the physical and social world around me. I became conscious of this principle bodily and intellectually at fourteen - but I knew or perhaps more accurately, felt, that I was aware of a far more complex world around me than I was being taught, from a much earlier age.
These might be described as meditations, acts of discipline, acts of making, acts of transcendence, acts of social justice, etc.…
Early on:
It might be difficult to differentiate these early events, actions, and performative acts from typical childhood play, but herein lies the intrigue: at what point in human development does our childhood connection to mystery, play, and selfless observation shift to conscious and structured action and behavior, and in the process of becoming ‘adult’ why does the socialized world around us appear to support the diluting of this child-like play? Where do we recognize this, and why, and what can help to break us free and open ourselves to play once again? Ideally, I find that a combination of play and working within structures and systems, along with self-less introspection, observation, and presence, is an effective set of conditions for creativity, invention, discovery, and simple wonder.
As a child:
fort and dam construction
temporary architectural models - in nature, of found materials, falling into decay and ruin
climbing; trees, electrical towers, rock walls, flagpoles
build rope bridges and other constructions
College:
Play piano non-stop from sunset to sunrise, in an old barn, overlooking fields. At dawn, a mountain of heavy low lying fog took an hour to roll in and fully enveloped the barn.
Stand in a low kiba-dachi, (horse riding stance in Shotokan Karate}, for one hour, transcending pain and bodily shaking, and finding stillness and relaxation, and no-pain.
Sonoran desert actions:
Carry my balaphon far into the desert at night and play for 8 hours non-stop, transcending physical pain and falling into musical patterns that were complex in their simplicity. In the nuances were found subtleties that could not be found otherwise. It was in the repetition of a rhythmic and melodic pattern that I came to see the range of the remarkable complexity of the sound emanating from the instrument, and conversely, echoing back from the walls of the surrounding rock formations. As I played, I no longer played, and listened with more focus, and therefore, clarity. Playing music is to listening, as photographing is to seeing. In the act of playing an instrument is a sort of removal from the music; it seems to come from a time delay between a note played and then heard. I find the same when I am photographing. In a sense, through the lens, through framing and intensely looking at a section of my visual field, I am seeing very closely; yet simultaneously I am also not present in the moment, and only seeing that section I have outlined in the camera. As soon as I lower the camera, I am again in the present; but it has been segmented.
By moonlight and without headlights, drive to remote spot in the desert and sight a far-off mountain. Spend two hours walking towards the mountain and make no progress, but find a small pond filled with an ear splitting cacauphonous symphony of frogs. Sit for two hours with the frogs. Return to my car by keeping aware of landmarks (trees, cacti, outcroppings, sounds, etc.) before the moon set. Sleep in car.
Sit on the desert floor for five hours in front of a night blooming Sirius, a cactus that has a flower that begins to open at sunset, is fully opened by the light of the full moon, and has wilted and withered away by morning. In a deep gaze and complete concentration, and without moving my attention from the flower, watch it slowly open. By the time I glanced away, my sense of time had been altered. I looked up at the moon, measured as reference against a standing palm tree, and registered its movement across the sky as faster than the rate at which the flower had slowing opened.
Sit naked on a huge rock podium in a desert canyon while a violent storm builds from one small cloud to a tempest, throwing lightning bolts in every direction, over a twelve-hour period, from mid-day until the pitch-black of night, without moving from the rock.
Free climb a one-hundred-foot rock face.
Stand balanced on one foot on top of two 4x8x12” vertically stacked cinder blocks for one hour - look up and pause as the space shuttle mounted atop a 747 passed overhead at 200 feet altitude; fall off.
Studio actions:
Observe the pathways of movements from workstation to workstation in my studio, map out in my mind, and walk those patterns in slow motion for extended time-period. Then reverse and walk the patterns backwards.
Turn on and listen to multiple sources of sound (around a dozen); music, talk radio, an electric fan, etc.; sit still and listen/non-listen to all sounds for a long duration, until I could easily isolate one, two or more sounds with complete focus, finding patterns, phases, dissonances, harmonies, etc.
Outdoor actions:
Clean a park of garbage at night with no ones knowledge.
Rake a remote beach into a pattern of even rows.